In the Japanese Pharmacopeia 15th edition, a burdock fruit is defined as a fruit of burdock, Arctum lappa Linne (Compositae), which is herbal medicine prescribed for Gingyo-san, Kufugedoku-to, Shofu-san and the like, and which is classified in the primary material to be used as pharmaceutical agent exclusively.
A burdock fruit contains approximately 7% of arctiin which is classified in lignan glycoside and approximately 0.6% of arctigenin which is an aglycone of arctiin.
In recent years, the cells derived from pancreas cancer such as PANC-1, AsPC-1, BxPC-1 and KP-3 have strong tolerance to the extreme nutrition fasting state, and the possibility is reported that the elimination of the tolerance becomes a new biochemical approach in the cancer therapy (patent document 1).
In addition, it is reported that arctigenin is effective, when screened a material which could release the viability of tumor cells in the undernutrition condition using pancreas cancer cell line PANC-1 (non-patent document 1).